Asawin Suebsaeng

Interactive Writing Fellow

Asawin Suebsaeng is the interactive writing fellow at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. He has also written for The American Prospect, the Bangkok Post, and Shoecomics.com.

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A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., Asawin came back to DC with hopes of putting his flimsy Creative Writing major, student newspaper tenure, and interest in human rights and political chicanery to some use. He started cutting his teeth at F&M's student-run weekly, The College Reporter, serving as editor in chief. He has interned at The American Prospect, been a reporter for the Bangkok Post, and scribbled for ShoeComics.com. His favorite movie is either Apocalypse Now or Pirahna 3D, depending on the day or mood.

They Finally (!!) Made a Movie Based On Battleship...

...and it just so happens to be the most glowingly patriotic thing in theaters right now.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri May. 18, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

A production still.

Battleship
Universal Pictures
131 minutes

At first glance, Battleship seems like the most inexcusable, wretched pile of flabby urethra to crawl out of the movie industry in decades.

For starters, the film has been attracting a year-long volley of unfiltered rage for being such a blatant, self-satirizing model of product placement and cross promotion: The movie is openly advertised as an adaptation of the Milton Bradley board game of the same title. The board game. As in, the thing you and your childhood buddies played on the floor of your parents' living room, in the days before you knew what paintball or a spliff was.

This thing, right here:

And unlike games like Clue or even Space Hulk, the sea-battle guessing game never bore any tangible plot. It was just you and your prepubescent cohorts shouting out combinations of letters and numbers. It's not a toy that in any way begs to be whored out to Hollywood script-doctors eager to capitalize on nostalgia and commercial familiarity. As sage-wisdom doler Rob Delaney opined earlier this month, "It isn't okay that there's a movie 'based on' Battleship starring Rihanna. That is a thing that is not okay."

Everything seemed to be teed up for king-sized failure—disposable escapism that amounted to little more than Battle: Los Angeles, but with 80% less dry land. Or Transformers, absent the irrepressible charms and sly wit of actress Megan Fox.

But here's the dirty little secret about Battleship: It's actually a ragingly dumb good time, that also happens to be the most enjoyably patriotic thing in theaters today.

[Read the full article]

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"The Dictator": A Qaddafi-Inspired Rom-Com Filled With Pubic-Hair Jokes

Sacha Baron Cohen's uneven comedy still confirms his status as a master satirist.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed May. 16, 2012 12:01 AM PDT

The Dictator
Paramount Pictures
83 minutes

If The Dictator were a dictator, it would probably be Chiang Kai-shek: good in spurts, but excessive and, in the end, unpardonably flawed.

The film (directed by Larry Charles) chronicles the politically incorrect misadventures of Adm. General Haffaz Aladeen, the jolly autocrat of the fictional North African republic of Wadiya. The character—actor/satirist Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation—is a comic pastiche of democracy-killing icons: Aladeen enjoys a flamboyant, sybaritic, rape-abundant lifestyle à la Uday Hussein. He possesses the megalomania and the "Amazonian Guard" of a Moammar Qaddafi. And his regime's nuke-happy, Jew-baiting tendencies are a caricature of today's Iranian hardliners.

Mix together those three ingredients, add a dash of Elmer J. Fudd, and you've got yourself one tall, mad Haffaz Aladeen.

[Read the full article]

"Dark Shadows" May Imperil Tim Burton's AC/DC Status

The director's patented formula gets another workout, featuring Johnny Depp as a goofy-ass '70s vampire.

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri May. 11, 2012 3:25 AM PDT

Dark Shadows
Warner Bros. Pictures
113 minutes

In March 2010, CollegeHumor.com debuted a sketch titled "Tim Burton's Secret Formula." The Burton character brainstorms with his team of "weavers of shadowy fantasms" to come up with his next big project. Burton rejects the idea for an original screenplay and declares that they will stick to taking "an old story that was already creepy and make it shitload creepier!" From there, the other elements and usual suspects fall into place: Johnny Depp, Tim Burton's domestic partner, buckets of white make-up, black set design and wardrobe, Danny Elfman score, and haunted everything.

Even if you admire, as I do, Burton's directorial output since 1999—which has indeed leaned heavily on rebooting famous old tales—it's hard to argue that this was an unwarranted lampooning. Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, and Alice in Wonderland can be damn-near aesthetically interchangeable. The same goes for Burton's latest, Dark Shadows, a star-studded adaptation of the influential 1960s daytime soap that threw together black magic, werewolves, and vampires—"Satan's favorite TV show," as it was labeled by boycott-happy Christian groups at the time.

To his credit, Burton has achieved what I like to call the AC/DC standard: Once popular artists really nail a good formula, they reach a point where it is permissible to abandon the pursuit of originality or innovation. Listening to the albums High Voltage and Highway to Hell back-to-back is much like watching Burton's glut of remakes in rapid succession—the formula feels more like signature style, and you learn to forgive and often embrace the predictability.

But the fatal snag with Dark Shadows isn't its lack of originality. It's that halfway through, the film forgets to bring the fun. The result is a thoroughly uneven black comedy that builds to a thunderously unsatisfying conclusion.

[Read the full article]

The GOP Plan To Protect New York From Iran's Nonexistent Transatlantic Missiles

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu May. 10, 2012 3:01 AM PDT

Pictured: Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), left, and Iranian aggression.

House Republicans want to protect America in the event Iran suddenly decides to start raining down rockets on Manhattan's Theatre District. Their ambitious solution? A missile shield for the East Coast—think of it as yet another big-budget sequel to "Star Wars."

Predictably, Democrats are eager to spoil their fun:

A new Republican plan to set up a missile defense site on the East Coast has attracted election-year fireworks, with Democrats accusing the GOP of pushing the idea to undercut President Obama's national-security credentials.

Democrats say Republicans are playing politics, but GOP members hit back saying the site is necessary to get ahead of the rising threat of Iran's missile development and to plug a gap in U.S. missile defenses..."This is a political move," said Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), who intends to introduce an amendment Wednesday to strip the provision from the defense authorization bill. "Every time the election comes around, the Republicans run out a national security agenda."

Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House strategic forces subcommittee, counters thusly:

You cannot open a newspaper or turn on a TV…without seeing a story of the rising threat from Iran and North Korea to mainland United States. With these emerging threats it is inevitable that an East Coast site will be necessary in order to ensure we have the ability to lessen the threats from both Iran and North Korea.

House Republicans have been kicking around this idea for a few weeks now. It would require $100 million upfront to get the project off the ground, and would take about four years to build.

There are lots of reasons why this plan is punishingly ill-advised.

Yes, Iranian military and government officials have indeed said things about attacking the East Coast of the United States with their missiles and naval fleets. They've also said things about launching simultaneous Red Dawn-like ground offensives on American, European, Israeli, and Palestinian soil, and that George W. Bush brought down the World Trade Center. Basically, Iran says a lot of things, often with the same attachment to reality you'd get from a Kardashian wedding.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 9, 2012

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed May. 9, 2012 7:42 AM PDT

Sgt. Joshua Smith, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, chats with an Afghan boy during an Afghan-led clearing operation on April 28, 2012 in Ghazni province, Afghanistan. The soldier studied the Pashtun language prior to his deployment to southern Ghazni. US Army photo by Sgt. Michael J. MacLeod.